Alcoholics Anonymous(kinda)

Eric h

Well-known member
Very true Quincy M.D.,

Alcoholism and/or drug addiction are extremely SELFISH illnesses -

I kind of agree with you, but the people I have known to be alcoholic, have had to cope with grim events in their life, it is their way of getting through the day.

Then the problem becomes twofold, they need the strength to cope with their depression, and they need the strength to kick the addiction of booze. It seems you need to have some real inner beliefs, to make those changes.

Well done MrDeets, day 74 :thumb:
 

bybee

New member
It's a good morning to be sober. Coffee and bacon makes me happy.

Yup! And I get to get up on my gimpy ankle and rake wet leaves before the snow flies!
Looking forward to all of the little "Trick or Treaters" in their costumes. I go all decorating for Halloween!
 

MrDeets

TOL Subscriber
Yup! And I get to get up on my gimpy ankle and rake wet leaves before the snow flies!
Looking forward to all of the little "Trick or Treaters" in their costumes. I go all decorating for Halloween!

:) Too much fun!! I love trick or treaters. :devil:
 

PureX

Well-known member
Recovering addicts and alcoholics need to be especially vigilant during holidays, because holidays tend to hide lots of 'triggers'. Just the air of excitement and anticipation that comes with a holiday can be a powerful impulse trigger for an addict/alcoholic. Not to mention the memories that get brought up.
 

Tambora

Get your armor ready!
LIFETIME MEMBER
Hall of Fame
Yup! And I get to get up on my gimpy ankle and rake wet leaves before the snow flies!
Snow, yuck!
We are finally getting some cool weather.
But I don't want no snow!

Looking forward to all of the little "Trick or Treaters" in their costumes. I go all decorating for Halloween!
I don't decorate the house, but I do enjoy the trick-or-treater too!
 

serpentdove

BANNED
Banned
It's a good morning to be sober. Coffee and bacon makes me happy.
Good for you. May God bless you.

big-hug-smiley-face.gif
 

Caino

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Banned
My name is Josh, and I'm an alcoholic. I am working on day 39 of my sobriety, and I don't know much, but I know I won't drink today.

That being said, I searched for a similar thread to no avail, so I thought I'd start one so that any of us that would like/need another place to talk/vent/be heard would have it. I've made some pretty decent friendships on TOL over the last 5 years, so I have no doubt that this thread can be a good place for those of us that need it. I know I need it, since I work 3 weeks at a time without any real chance to catch a meeting.

Bill said in the AA's Big Book that "we are people who normally would not mix. But there exists among us a fellowship, a friendliness, and an understanding which is indescribably wonderful." That's as true at AA meetings as it is here at TOL, so I hope we can all get along, or at least be respectful here. :)

In tradition with AA, I'd like to keep theology out of here as much as possible. This thread is for those who are staying sober, one day at a time, or for those who would like insight into any aspect of AA. I hope this thread is helpful to even one other person here. :wave2:

Congratulations! Those early days are so magical! The realization that with Gods grace we CAN stay sober. :the_wave:
 

patrick jane

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Banned
I kind of agree with you, but the people I have known to be alcoholic, have had to cope with grim events in their life, it is their way of getting through the day.

Then the problem becomes twofold, they need the strength to cope with their depression, and they need the strength to kick the addiction of booze. It seems you need to have some real inner beliefs, to make those changes.

Well done MrDeets, day 74 :thumb:

Every single person ever, has grim events in their life. Moderation is key and alcoholics can't do moderation.
 

patrick jane

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Banned
Recovering addicts and alcoholics need to be especially vigilant during holidays, because holidays tend to hide lots of 'triggers'. Just the air of excitement and anticipation that comes with a holiday can be a powerful impulse trigger for an addict/alcoholic. Not to mention the memories that get brought up.

True, and sober Holidays are so much better with family and friends. It really is the small simple things in life that matter, and Christ at the center.
 

PureX

Well-known member
True, and sober Holidays are so much better with family and friends. It really is the small simple things in life that matter, and Christ at the center.
It is amazing what we can learn about life and ourselves once an addiction has stripped us of everything we thought we knew about these things. It's very frightening, and embarrassing, and uncomfortable, but if we can stay sober in spite of it, we begin to re-discover … everything. And it's true that what really matters tends to make itself known. As opposed to what we had always thought was so important, before.

Recovery takes a long time, but what we gain is the person that we were meant to be, present and available to share with others. As opposed to that lost soul that we had become in our active addiction.

I wouldn't trade back for anything!
 

PureX

Well-known member
I found and watched that documentary, "Amy".

Sadly, her story is not much different from the stories of the many addicts that die in their addictions, everywhere, every day, with the exception of her talent and fame. Which of course, in our money-obsessed culture, attracted many greedy and enabling parasites. (Every addict/alcoholic will attract the enabling parasites, of like kind, but most don't attract the money/fame parasites that Amy Winehouse did.) Yet every wealthy and famous person attracts those parasites, and yet do not die from it. So as ugly and exploitive as they were, it was not the greedy parasites that killed Amy Winehouse. It was addiction.

It would be easy to blame part of this on her lousy parents, but the world is full of people who grew up with lousy parents, and got over it. Sadly, for Amy, one of the overwhelming characteristics of addiction is that when we use substances and behaviors to alter how we feel, we never learn to properly deal with our feelings. So past traumas never get resolved. And they pile up. The addict just keeps self-medicating to avoid feeling them, and then the trauma comes right back as soon as the drug/drink/whatever wears off. Most addicts find their drugs of choice early in life, and so never really do grow up. As with Amy Winehouse, they remain childish, and weak-willed, and therefor tend to make bad life decisions, over and over again.

And to compound this problem of never getting over emotional trauma, and never growing up, addiction needs to keep itself hidden within the addict. So the addict tends to emotionally wallow in every bad thing that ever happened to them as an excuse for continually turning to their drugs of choice, to 'fix' those feelings (though they never really get fixed). So it creates a self-reinforcing habit of bad decisions = emotional trauma = escapism = more bad decisions and drama = more trauma = more escapism … you get the idea. The addiction hides in this endless cycle of blame and escape.

In time, addicts tend to become very grandiose, and needy, as a way of generating the kind of emotional drama, and trauma, that feeds their need to then escape from it. Thus, they often become 'addicted' to their enablers. They call it love, but it's not love. It's just part of the self-perpetuating cycle that addicts fall into, and can't get out. You could see this in Amy's life very clearly, with the endless string of loser boyfriends that she imagined she could not live without. She behaved like a helpless needy child because that made her a victim, and gave her that perpetual excuse to escape her victimhood with drugs and alcohol. A life she created for herself, and doggedly maintained, to feed her ongoing addiction. Any Winehouse was a victim of addiction. Not the victim of her life's circumstances.

People don't understand how all-encompassing and devious addictions really are. It's easy to fall into blaming life along with the addict, for what the addict is doing to themselves. But the truth is that Amy Winehouse had been given many great gifts: intelligence, looks, talent, creativity, a fantastic voice, … and yet even with all these amazing tools, and her eventual money and fame, she still could not beat her addiction. And it finally killed her. Just as addictions kill millions of people every year, all across the world.

We say Amy's death is a tragedy. And it certainly is. But so are all the others. We just don't hear about them. I guess what I liked about the documentary is that it shows people how incredibly debilitating addictions really are. And how incredibly difficult they are to overcome. And that people NEED HELP to do it. They cannot do it by themselves, with 'will power'. Because addictions are far more intractable than any amount of self-will can ever overcome.

I am truly saddened by stories like Amy's. Because I know them all too well. I've lived my own version of it. And I've heard hundreds of them from addicts and alcoholics in meetings from Chicago to Sydney. But I also have heard just as many stories of those who overcame their addictions, and went on to live happy and productive lives. And my heart fills with joy every time. Because I know what a miracle that really is.

I'm sorry that Amy Winehouse's story is not one of those. But she's not the first to die of addiction, and she already isn't the last. And there's already another young woman out there somewhere, right now, with a magnificent voice, a gift for writing songs, unstoppable beauty and intelligence, that's going to blow us all away when she hits the lights. And hopefully she will not have been born with a proclivity for addiction.

And then she'll change the soul of the world.
 

Crucible

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AA is not the only program or philosophy for alcoholism. It is the oldest- in fact, it was the first program ever created for people dealing with a substance problem.

But by the same point, not everyone agrees with the 'sobriety for life' way for alcoholics. It's a philosophy fundamentally built on fear and doesn't acknowledge Christ as actually removing a disease from one's mind- it rather holds to one always being under a disease even if they never drink again.
 
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